


Some Good Advice, Please (the Maybe-It's-Bad-Sushi Remix)

by circ_bamboo



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 21:48:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's possible that Joanna McCoy might be pregnant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Good Advice, Please (the Maybe-It's-Bad-Sushi Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Where You Are Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/313222) by [izzyb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzyb/pseuds/izzyb). 



Joanna McCoy’s father is a doctor; her mother had been a lawyer, and her step-mom (well, they’re not married but who cares about that) is a biochemist and nurse. Being organized, either academically or spatially speaking or in the case of her step-mom, both, runs in the family. She’s organized, she really is, but it still comes as a surprise to her when she opens up her medicine cabinet to get a new month’s pack of birth control pills and there aren’t any more. _Crap_. She digs around in her purse, her backpack, and the giant tupperware container of miscellaneous things she keeps in the closet, and they’re not there, either.

It’s seven-thirty, and she has class at 8:15, and she doesn’t really have time to run to the Student Health Center now because she has to shower and then maybe reread her notes for class, because Heller actually cold-calls students and she has to be prepared. She can go at lunchtime.

Except she _can’t_ , because she’s supposed to meet with her group for O-Chem and the project is due next week, so she can’t exactly skip that either. She has time at about 2:30.

Which, of course, means Jo doesn’t get there until a little after three. The pharmacy counter is still open, though, and one of the techs looks up her prescription. “I’m sorry, Ms. McCoy,” she says, “but your prescription has expired. You need to see the gynecologist to get a new one.”

No, she doesn’t, at least not yet. She goes to the gynecologist in September, every year, just after school starts, and it’s--

\--October. _Oh._

“Okay,” she says. It’s not the tech's fault. “Thanks.”

She can’t get an appointment until two days later, and even that’s a miracle that requires her to skip Modern Brit Lit, but it really shouldn’t be that big a deal.

* * *

“Wait,” Jo says, and it’s damn difficult, what with her brain all syrupy with lust and Pavel’s hands and mouth _right there_. “I think--you know, never mind.”

“What is it?” he asks, sitting back on his heels.

She wants to yell that _this is not the time to stop_ , but she knows he really wants to know and probably won’t continue until he finds out. He’s fond of communication--much more fond than she is, certainly. “I didn’t start the current pack of pills until three days after I was supposed to,” she said.

He nodded. “I can wear a condom,” he said, “or we can just--”

“No,” she says. She wants him _inside_ her, as soon as possible. “Look, it’s probably fine; I’ve been taking this pack of pills for two weeks now, and I’m on a pretty heavy dose--over 35 micrograms of ethinyl estradiol.” He’s a physicist, not a doctor, but they have a standing arrangement to use proper terminology. Besides, he seems to think it’s sexy when she starts speaking in scientific Latin. “But--maybe the condom?”

“Yes, of course,” he says, and smiles at her as he reaches into the bedside drawer.

The stupid thing breaks, though, and he’s so apologetic and worried that it puts a damper on any other activities for the rest of the weekend.

* * *

Jo goes home, calls up one of her friends who’s a few years older and has already started her OB-GYN residency, and asks what to do. Anna laughs at her and tells her the odds of anything happening are practically zero, but if she’s really worried she can take two of her regular pills now and two more in twelve hours and that’s basically the same as Plan B.

She takes the first dose, but about a half hour later she throws them up and doesn’t bother with the second dose.

She doesn’t see Pavel for another two weeks after that, and by then, she’s back on track with her pills and doesn’t think about it again.

* * *

The weekend before finals, Jo steals away to spend one last night with Pavel before she has to go home to her parents and pretend that she isn’t dating one of her father’s very-much-younger coworkers. They go out for sushi Saturday night, and that’s the first thing she suspects when she wakes up Sunday morning and has to run to the bathroom to throw up.

But Pavel isn’t sick; he comes in to hold her hair back and get her a glass of water. It doesn’t stop, the nausea or vomiting, for a couple hours, but then all of a sudden it _does_ , and it’s a relief.

She mumbles something about bad fish, and he nods.

The next morning she’s back in her dorm, and the same thing happens; she’s almost late for her Calc 4 exam, and when she gets there, she’s so distracted that she almost runs out of time at the end.

On the bus back to her dorm, she tries to remember exactly when her last period was. She was due to start on Wednesday; she’d used the pills to skip the one in November, because it would have conflicted with a weekend with Pavel (he doesn’t care but she does, thank you very much). That meant that the last one she’d had was in October, before the broken condom incident. Great.

Well, nothing to do except see if she misses her period, right?

* * *

Saturday comes around and Jo is officially four days late. It happens occasionally, even with the pill, but never after skipping a month. She’s thrown up in the morning twice more, but thank God not that morning, in her parents’ house. Her hands have been shaking for the last day and a half and she has no idea how she’s managed to hide it as well as she has since she got home.

The family’s holiday party for all her parents’ friends is that evening, and half of them are there already. Aunt Nyota is in the kitchen, cooking up a storm, and in the middle of the day, she sends Christine, Jo’s step-mom, to the grocery store to pick up a few more ingredients. Jo volunteers to go along; she wouldn’t mind getting out of the house for a few minutes.

It isn’t until after she drops a jar of Hungarian paprika in the spice aisle and starts crying that she realizes that she has to tell _someone_ , and Christine is by far the best choice. “I think I’m pregnant,” she says, and it comes out a bit on the harsh side.

“Does your father know?”

She should have expected that question, she guesses, and shakes her head _no_. Watching Christine’s face, she also sees the moment when the penny drops--her breakup with Cory was in August, and her parents still don’t know about Pavel.

“Who is it?” Christine asks, and her tone is just edgy enough to bring the tears back to Jo’s eyes. She seems to realize that, though, and her next words were much gentler. “Listen, Jo. Let’s just go home and talk about this. I mean, are you sure?”

“No.” She isn’t. It’s like the damn cat in the box; if she found out for sure it would be real, one way or another, and although she’s absolutely certain she doesn’t want to be pregnant right now, she still doesn’t want to feel stupid for worrying about it.

“Have you told anyone else?”

_The potential father_ , Christine means. Jo hears it as clear as day, and can feel all the blood draining from her face as she shakes her head _no_ again. Ducking Christine’s eyes, she pushes the cart over to the checkout area.

They forget the paprika, but Aunt Nyota does without it.

* * *

Pavel arrives a little bit before the party is actually supposed to start, and Jo drags him into the garden before anyone in the house sees him. “I’m late,” she says bluntly, as soon as they’re out of earshot.

He doesn’t misunderstand her; the first words out of his mouth are “I love you.” He follows them up with, “Whatever you choose--and it is your choice, not mine--I will support you and be there, if you want me to be.”

“Oh, God,” she says, and bursts into tears.

A couple minutes later, when she has control of herself again, she says, “It’s just--my dad.”

“I know,” he says. “And as much as I am happy to be with you and as much as I want the world to know, I think we should perhaps take away your father’s shotgun first.”

She laughs, and it’s a bit watery. “He doesn’t have a shotgun. He has a rifle, but it’s locked in the gun safe and I’m not sure he knows where the key is.”

“Close enough,” Pavel says.

She nods. “I’ll have to tell him at some point,” she says. “He’s a doctor--he can do the blood test, and then, if it turns out that I am--well, then, we’ll deal with that. Okay?”

He nods again, and kisses her quickly. “Okay.”

Pavel Chekov isn’t perfect--he really isn’t; he’s, what, seven years older than she is, and leaves his socks all over the place and can’t cook food that isn’t mostly cabbage and potatoes boiled for three days, and sometimes he’s a little condescending because he had his Ph.D before he was twenty and she’s merely right on track for her age--but at the moment, he’s making a good run at it.

* * *

Jo isn’t necessarily planning on telling her dad that evening; she’d told Christine in the car that she wanted to wait. But between the odd looks that Christine is throwing her and that thing where she dropped her almost-full wineglass in Pavel’s lap, she almost has no choice. So after Christine has pled exhaustion and excused herself, and after Uncle Jim and Uncle Scotty have started their usual attempt to make the most undrinkable drink possible, she says, “Dad, can I talk to you for a moment?”

“Sure,” he says, and sets down his glass of bourbon. “How about in the study?”

He’s still mostly sober, she thinks; he isn’t slurring, and his accent is no thicker than usual. Besides, since Christine came into his life, he rarely has more than a glass or two at a time. But the amount of alcohol he _has_ had might soften him up just a bit for this conversation. She hopes.

When the door closes behind her, she looks up at him. He looks worried, but not overly so, and he’s clearly waiting for her to start. She takes a deep breath--best just to say it--and says, “Dad, I think I’m pregnant.”

He doesn’t say anything, but his expression changes, and-- _He’s disappointed_ , she realizes. “Who was it?” he asks.

The tears start to prickle under her eyelids. “It was me,” she says, although she knows what he is asking. “I forgot to renew my prescription and I had to start the pack a couple days late.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to use a backup method?” he asks. He’s not yelling, but it’s somehow worse.

She shakes her head, and a tear falls down her cheek. “We did, but--”

“Oh, darlin’,” he says, and pulls her into his arms. “Don’t cry. We’ll get through this. Have you been tested?”

She shakes her head again.

Of course her father has an ELISA testing setup in his home lab; she’d tested for viral antigens many times in high school, because he thought it was a useful thing to know. He takes her blood, just a few drops from her finger, and when the substrate is added, she holds her breath, as does he.

It doesn’t change right away, and they cautiously start breathing again. She doesn’t look at him, though, and neither says anything. A few minutes later, the reaction time has long since passed, and it clearly hasn’t changed color. She isn’t pregnant.

She isn’t _pregnant._

Oh, thank God.

“We’ll do another test in two days,” Dad says, because he’s a doctor and he has to be sure, “but I think you could have had that wine with dinner.”

She nods, and starts crying again, and he sits on the leather couch and pulls her into his arms again. “Jo, darlin’,” he says. “You’re old enough to make your own decisions, and I respect that, and I get the idea you’re not about to tell me who this new boyfriend of yours is, at least not yet. And that’s fine--for now, at least. But I love you, and I never want you to be afraid to come ask me for help.”

“I love you too, Daddy,” she says, and sniffles into his shirt.

There’s a lot they haven’t talked about, and should--she still needs to figure out how to tell him about Pavel, for one thing--but for now, it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> The bit about using standard pills for emergency contraception is true but please do your own research or talk to a physician first. Title from "Papa Don't Preach," because I have that sense of humor.


End file.
